Harper's Weekly excerpt

James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for his role in the
discovery of DNA, said that while he wishes everyone were
equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find
this is not true." Lynn Cheney announced that her husband
and Barack Obama are eighth cousins. "Every family," said
the Obama campaign, "has a black sheep." A New York man
was arrested after wearing a stolen Rolex watch to his
parole meeting, an Ohio woman stood accused of digging up
her ex-boyfriend's grave and stealing his ashes, and a
Virginia woman was fined for attacking a Comcast store
with a hammer after the company cut off her phone and
Internet connections. "I smashed a keyboard, knocked over
a monitor and I went to hit the telephone," she said. "I
figured, 'Hey, my telephone is screwed up, so is yours.'"
A New Jersey woman sent 80,000 cans of Silly String, which
can locate trip wires, to U.S. troops in Iraq; a military
spokesperson thanked her but admitted that soldiers don't
use as much Silly String today as they did at the
beginning of the war. Forty-nine percent of New Jersey
residents admitted they'd rather live somewhere else. Taku
the killer whale died unexpectedly at the San Antonio
SeaWorld, 5 of the world's 350 remaining Asiatic Lions
were found dead next to an electric fence in India, and
the curator of the Rotterdam Natural History Museum asked
the public to donate pubic crabs, claiming that their
population was dwindling as a result of Brazilian
waxes. "When the bamboo forests that the Giant Panda
lives in were cut down, the bear became threatened with
extinction. Pubic lice," he explained, "can't live without
pubic hair."

Oh, Lordy, that last thing about the crabs is insane. It does get me thinking about (other than Brazilian waxes) how we somewhat, for lack of a better term, ‘discriminate’ against which species are worthy of saving from extinction. Sure, save the cute pandas and gorillas, but what about the polio virus? Or bed-bugs? Who’s sticking up for these guys?